The Repsol Honda Team riders complete the first day in Austria with Márquez and Pedrosa in fourth and sixth place, respectively.
The first practice session, held in dry conditions, ended with Marc Márquez fourth, setting a time of 1:24.411, and Dani Pedrosa sixth -1:24.474.
An intense downpour turned the track wet just before FP2, forcing the start of the session to be delayed by fifteen minutes.
With the asphalt completely wet, Marc Márquez finished first, with teammate Dani Pedrosa twenty-third.
MARC MÁRQUEZ 4th | 1’24.411
“It was a good day for us. This afternoon, we actually had some doubts about going out in the rain, because it should be dry tomorrow afternoon and Sunday. Anyway, we decided to try, and we just did a few laps to check the electronics and a little bit the setup. I immediately felt very good and confident, but the most important thing is that I also had a good feeling this morning in the dry. We knew there was the possibility of rain later but we decided to go on with the same tyre, the medium spec, for the entire session, working for the race as we normally do. Tomorrow we’ll try the other tyre specs. Sure, the Ducatis are very fast here, especially Dovizioso, but we’re not far off.”
DANI PEDROSA 6th | 1’24.474
“In the morning the track was completely dry so we tried to be as fast as possible because of the high chances of rain in the FP2. We wished also to exploit at the maximum the session to understand as much as possible the track and the tyres. This afternoon I made just a couple of laps just to check the tyres and the grip on wet conditions, which was better than I expected. Clearly if the rain gets really hard it would be a problem. Here the weather changes very quickly so it was important to try and understand the feeling we could get, but anyway the conditions should be better tomorrow”.
